It’s simply got to be gnawing at Chris Mortensen, the longtime ESPN NFL reporter, to be missing the draft this year. He announced in January that he’s got throat cancer, Stage IV, and that’s all kinds of terrible for anyone, not least for a guy who trades on having a voice. Since the draft kicked off his Twitter…

ESPN’s Chris Mortensen will be temporarily stepping away from his duties as an NFL analyst while undergoing treatment for Stage IV throat cancer. Mortensen announced the news via a statement on ESPN.com:

Remember that pair of strange recent tweets from Adam Schefter and Chris Mortensen suggesting that the two ESPN NFL insiders would be staying in on New Year’s Eve to watch the college football playoff and eat Domino’s Pizza? They were, indeed, part of an ad campaign.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell held a press conference in Chicago today to announce the 2016 NFL Draft’s return to the city, and while he was taking questions, the BostonGlobe’s Ben Volin took the chance to ask why the league didn’t correct Chris Mortensen’s “11 of 12 footballs” report when Ted Wells’s investigation…

The first report that something fishy had occurred with the footballs during the AFC Championship game came from Bob Kravitz, a reporter for Indianapolis’s WTHR. But it was Chris Mortensen’s report the next day that 11 of the 12 footballs were under inflated by two pounds that turned what had been a “huh, this is…

On this afternoon's NFL Insiders, Mort received a phone call he just had to take. I'm so disappointed that it was time for a commercial break, because his mic was still on. We were this close to TV viewers getting breaking news before Twitter users for the first time this decade.

Those Manning boys sure are having a good time in Durham, aren't they? Eli's over here causing all kinds of mischief with Chris Mortensen's hair, and now we have big brother Peyton pulling a prank on one of his best wide receivers.

When the season is actually delayed, we'll hate the NFL lockout for that. But for now we're just pissed at Goodell and/or De Smith that there's no football news out there. Summers suck for sports, and NFL draft/free agency/holdouts/training camp talk are an entire second season that we're lacking. Which is why we're…

Because no one reads the newspaper, and SportsCenter's anchors are too perky for this early in the morning, Deadspin combs the best of the broadsheets and internets to bring you everything you need to know to start your day.

Tough start of the week for Mort. First, ESPN takes away his Twitter freedom. And now he's back at training camp and dealing with this asshole again. Which week do you think Glazer TP's the Mort Mobile? [PFT]

One of the many tragedies of Brett Favre's non-unretirement is that Ed Werder and Chris Mortensen, ESPN's Woodward and Bernstein of the small-bore, will no longer be feverishly working their anonymous sources for the world's most trivial Favre scoops.